Pakistan Moveson Spy Agency

December 8, 2001|By Douglas Frantz The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — One month after the Pakistani government agreed to end its support for the Taliban, its intelligence agency was still providing safe passage for weapons and ammunition to arm them, according to Western and Pakistani officials.

On Oct. 8 and again on Oct. 12, Pakistani border guards at a dusty checkpoint in the Khyber Pass waved on convoys headed into Afghanistan. Western intelligence officials said that under the trucks' tarpaulins were rifles, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers for Taliban fighters.

Pakistan's premier spying agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, had long provided safe passage to convoys of truckers and smugglers who supplied weapons to the Taliban. But the policy was to have changed in September after a Washington ultimatum to Pakistan.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official acknowledged that the Oct. 8 shipment did contain arms for the Taliban, but he said that it was the last officially sanctioned delivery and that the Pakistanis have since been living up to their commitment to the Americans.

Even around that time, there were signs of a change. Pakistani military advisers were withdrawn from Afghanistan during the following weeks, a move that Western intelligence officials say may have been a crucial factor in the surprisingly swift collapse of Taliban forces when confronted by the Northern Alliance.

"We did not fully understand the significance of Pakistan's role in propping up the Taliban until their guys withdrew and things went to hell fast for the Talibs," said a Western diplomat who has monitored the region for many years.

Nonetheless, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, remains what many describe as a state within a state.

"Power remains in the hands of a powerful group of jihadi generals who are outside the government apparatus, but have tentacles in government," said Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in an interview.

Bhutto is hardly an impartial observer. Now living in self-imposed exile in Dubai to avoid corruption charges at home, she blames the intelligence service for conspiring to topple her second government in 1996 in part because she refused to fully back the Taliban.

But her assessment is shared by many among Pakistan's intelligence and diplomatic ranks, where the strong sense is that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, must undertake a broader political purge if he hopes to loosen the grip of elements within the ISI who remain loyal to the Taliban -- even as their forces are collapsing.

One of the agency's staunchly Islamist intelligence directors was Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI in the late 1980s and who remains an influential figure within it.

"It will not be so easy for officers to set aside their beliefs and change sides," said Gul, who is now retired.

Gul said he remains pro-Taliban and he denounced the Americans for condemning the Afghan rulers and Osama bin Laden without providing any proof of guilt.

The ISI and Musharraf had specifically agreed to end its policies of support for the Taliban in a series of meetings and phone conversations right after Sept. 11.

But Pakistani intelligence officers and military advisers helped the Taliban at least as late as October.

To combat this, on Oct. 7 -- the day the Americans started bombing Afghanistan -- Musharraf removed ISI director , Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, who was regarded as pro-Taliban, and replaced him with a moderate, Lt. Gen. Ehsan ul Haq.